Debut Winner of the Weekend: “The Dance of Reality.” Alejandro Jodorowsky’s return to the big screen opened exclusively at the Landmark Sunshine in New York and Landmark Nuart in LA, and did so by exceeding box office expectations. It grossed $24,970 over the three day weekend, averaging $12,485 per theater. That made it the only film in release other than “X-Men: Days of Future Past” to average a six digit number, which is pretty impressive for the Chilean import, which blends Jodorowsky’s personal history with metaphor, mythology and poetry. The film, which is being released by ABKCO Films (who also produced and distributed Jodorowsky’s “El Topo” and “Holy Mountain”), the film will open exclusive engagements in Boston, Washington DC, Philadelphia and San Francisco next weekend before rolling out across the country in June and July.

Debut Loser of the Weekend:“Cold In July.” Literally days after it screened in the Directors Fortnight at Cannes,
Jim Mickie’s pulp noir thriller came to US theaters. But it didn’t seem like the exposure from
becoming a rare film to screen at Sundance and then head to Cannes — or its very strong reviews — helped it much. The Michael C. Hall-led film ended up grossing just $40,800 from six theaters in New York, L.A., Washington, D.C., Boston, Seattle and Dallas. No disaster, but its $6,800 average certainly wasn’t promising either.

Holdover Winners of the Weekend: “Chef” and “Belle.” In their third and fourth weekends, respectively, the films each expanded aggressively and up with impressive grosses of $2.3 million and $1.7 million — enough for “Chef’ to jump into the overall top 10 and for “Belle” to sit just under it. Their averages of $4,538 and $3,753 were the highest of the top 15 grossers after the mighty likes of “X-Men: Days of Future Past” and “Godzilla,” with further expansion looking promising. Could these two films end up becoming the 2014’s next $10 million grossers? So far, only one indie film — “The Grand Budapest Hotel” — has managed that feat, with very few breakouts beyond it. Finally, it looks like that will change.

Runner-Up: “The Immigrant.” Last week we called James Gray’s film the “debut loser,” but it managed to hang in there nicely enough in its second weekend for us to revoke the status. The Weinstein Company aggressively too it from 3 to 147 theaters on Friday, and the result was a $463,000 weekend and a respectable $3,150 average. Notably its grosses were up from its holdover theater at the Elinor Bunin Theater in New York despite the fact that it expanded throughout that city. The film seems like a safe bet to hit $1 million by next weekend.

The film also managed its 12th weekend in a row with a per-theater-average above $1,500, outperforming the much newer likes of “The Railway Man” and “Only Lovers Left Alive” in that regard, on far more screens. That’s a rare feat these days, and it seems likely the film will cross the $60 million mark in the next couple weeks.

“Chef,” “Fading Gigolo” and “Belle” each crossed the $3 million mark.

“The Immigrant,” “Fed Up” and “Ida” all $500,000 — and should each cross the $1 million mark easy.